SOURCE: "Satire and the Form of the Novel: The Problem of Aesthetic Unity in Northanger Abbey," in ELH, Vol. 32, No. 4, December, 1965, pp. 511-27.

In the following essay, Kearful argues that Northanger Abbey achieves a complex unity of fiction, satire, parody, burlesque, comedy, and tragedy.

I

The most important—and most interesting—critical problem concerning Northanger Abbey is the question of its aesthetic unity. Generally critics are forced to conclude that while brilliant in many of its parts, the book as a whole lacks a sufficiently consistent technique or unified form to make it a coherent work of art. Some would point to Henry Tilney's ambivalent position as surrogate ironic commentator for the author and object of her irony; some to the structural "detachability" of the "Gothic" chapters; some to the shallowness of Catherine's characterization as measured against her ostensibly central role; some to an uneasy coexistence within the...